


I Will Watch For You

by Lokei



Category: Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Genre: Eyes, Gen, Missing Scene, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-05
Updated: 2012-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-30 15:50:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between refusing the King and battling for his life in the desert, Balian has a moment of sympathy in the stableyard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Watch For You

**Author's Note:**

> A rediscovered piece I wrote back in 2005 (yeesh!) but still rather liked on re-reading.

She watched him.  
She watched her lady watching him.  
She watched him watching something only he could see.

She wondered what he saw. She knew she saw a man who had thrown himself into the dust to slake the thirst of his dependants. She saw a man whose gentle grip held even the laughter of children. She saw a man looking less and less out of his depth, whose eyes sought the heavens less and her lady more.

Marisa did not blame him. Her lady Sybilla drew the eyes of all around her, men and women, without even trying, just as he did.

Marisa thought she knew what her lady saw: a man as selfless as Guy de Lusignan was proud, a man as gentle as Guy was ruthless, a man who wore his nobility in his deeds, not his clothes. And even in the grime of the desert, he was as handsome as he was good.

But what did Balian, baron of Ibelin, see? For certain he did not see her, for which Marisa was glad enough: before that gaze strong men bowed and women melted. Much safer to be a sand mouse, still and silent in the shadows, than to attract the full attention of those liquid desert-cat eyes, of this Marisa was equally certain. So from the shadows she watched, and listened.

There was plenty to hear—the streets of Jerusalem no less than the fields of Ibelin rang with praise for this new young lord, and Marisa caught at the threads of probable truth that wound through his growing street legend.

When his deep cat eyes sought the sky, then, did he see his father’s approval shining down from the sun? God’s? His wife’s?

His child’s?

She saw the way he watched the children playing, and the hunger radiated off him like the desert heat. She couldn’t know, of course—all she knew was that his wife was dead—but she had seen that same look in her brother’s eyes, and she could guess at the pain which lay behind Balian’s.

So Marisa watched her lady lose her heart to the young baron of Ibelin, and saw the king and even frigid Tiberius smile under Balian’s intensity and sense of honor. Behind her veil, Marisa smiled too, every time he came through another scrape with Guy or was praised by her lady or the King.

Tonight, however, no one was smiling. As always, Marisa had been two steps behind Sybilla in the stable yard, and had heard the exchange between her lady and Balian over his refusal of the King’s offer.

“There will come a time when you will wish you had done little evil for a greater good.”

She cringed now to see the anguish in his deep eyes at Sybilla’s harsh parting words, at the princess’s departure, ferocious as a green-eyed stormcloud. Marisa knew better than to follow her in such a mood. Besides, she was frozen now, staring at Balian, as he was frozen, staring into the distance.

She bit her lip and then came to a decision. Lifting the veil off her face, she stepped forward into the spill of light from the stable door.

“My lord Balian?”

His gaze cleared and for the first time she felt the full force of the mind behind those eyes.

“Marisa, isn’t it?” Even in his own turmoil, he had a gentle smile to spare for her. At her wordless nod, he prompted her again. “You had something to say, Marisa?”

She took a deep breath of the night air.

“I have known my lady Sybilla a long time, my lord. It is her pride that is hurt, that you would put your conscience before your love for her. But she would not love you as she does were you able to set your conscience easily aside—she will realize it in time.” She bit her lip again and blushed, afraid of her bluntness.

“You speak freely and see much,” Balian said noncommittally, but then he offered her another of his soft smiles. “In this case I will hope that both what you see and say are true.” He sobered and his eyes went dark.

“While it is in my power to choose, I would not have another person’s death—another person’s soul—hinge upon my actions, no matter what that person’s sins. After all I have done, I came here for forgiveness. I will not compound my sins by agreeing to murder, here in the center of all that is deemed holy.”

Privately, Marisa thought there was a certain amount of wrong already done by falling in love with another man’s wife—but Sybilla was not a woman to be gainsaid, and there was no doubt in Marisa’s mind that Balian would have never approached the king’s sister the way she had gone to him.

“My lord?”

“You do not need to call me lord, Marisa. What is it?”

“Whether you would have it so or not, here you are a leader of men, and baron of Ibelin. You are a lord of Jerusalem, whether I say it or not,” Marisa said steadily. “But, my lord, I have been wondering—there was something in your eyes just now, and I have seen it there before—that gave you the strength to turn my Lady away…which I know from experience is far from easy,” she added with a touch of humor, but continued earnestly.

“Everyone looks to you and sees a leader, or a lover, or a loyal knight to command—they see what they need from you, and you give it, I have seen it. But what is it that you see, that lets you be all these things, and still be yourself?”

She could almost have laughed at the surprise etched on his finely planed face. Apparently, that was not a question he was asked very often.

“On his deathbed,” he said finally, “my father told me of a world where a man could be measured by his abilities rather than his birth, and by his deeds rather than by his religion. What the King has here is as close to that as perhaps any earthly kingdom can be, but still it is not quite the Kingdom of Heaven.”

He gazed at her, a slight tightness around his eyes which she had learned to associate with intense feeling.

“If I had accepted, the King would have executed not only Guy de Lusignan, but any and all of his knights that would not swear allegiance to me. Did you know that?”

He looked away, and then back again, urgency in his tone and the set of his chin.

“Did I do right, Marisa? Could any man bear to have that on his conscience?” He ground a heel into the dirt and the motion betrayed the tension in the rest of his body as the light from behind flickered over the rigid lines of his shoulders and coiled springs of his arms.

“If Guy becomes King I fear the people of this city will suffer,” he said tightly, “but I will not have blood spilled in my name for what could as easily pass for ambition as for the greater good. I cannot believe that is what God wants.”

“Then you have answered your own question, my lord,” Marisa said softly. “And I cannot blame you for your answer.”

He gave her a grim smile.

“You may be the only one.” He sighed. “You asked what I see? I see a chance to make the world better, but not by becoming King—I have no desire to be King. My father traveled with Germans, Saracens, Franks, holy men, and men at arms, and they followed him for love. He came to find me, and he and his companions showed me a better world, forged in Jerusalem, but not of it. I would take that knowledge home with me, so that the Kingdom of Heaven is not just Jerusalem. I would not be King of men who swear fealty out of fear, I would not be King at the price of my father’s dream. I would rather rebuild my life, far from any kings at all.”

Here he paused. “If that life is to include your lady, I will not have it brought about through murder. That is not what I would see, for any of us.”

His smile was sad now, and he turned to mount his horse.

“And now what I see, my lady, is that Guy will want me dead within the week, so I must go.” He breathed a small snort of amusement. “And you should not be seen with me. Keep yourself safe, Lady Marisa.”

She smiled and stepped back. “I shall pray for you until your safe return, my lord.”

A rare true smile broke over his face. “And after that?”

“Then we shall see,” she smiled in return. “Farewell, Balian, baron of Ibelin. I will watch for you.”

He nodded at her silently, and then he was gone.

She watched him in her mind’s eye all the way across the night desert.


End file.
